In Past Show

About Julie Speidel

Claiming that “the inspiration for [her] work is rooted in the power of travel,” Julie Speidel makes sculptures marked by references to the human body, nature, and an array of historical forms. Citing prehistoric and early Chinese Buddhist works, Pacific Northwest Native American carvings, and modern sculpture as some of her many influences, she blends representation and abstraction in her sculptures and installations. She works in bronze, marble, glass, and stone, crafting forms guided by geometry and also by human heads, limbs, and torsos and such natural features as trees and boulders. For a site-specific installation on Bainbridge Island, for example, she began by researching its geological formation. Taken with the glacial rocks still dotting its landscape, Speidel fabricated her own series of rocks in response, placing them about the island as though they were deposited by nature.